Nietzsche on epistemology and metaphysics

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Nietzsche on Epistemology and Metaphysics

by

Tsarina DoyJe

A thesis submitted

in

Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter One: Nietzsche's Appropriation of Kant 25

Chapter Two: Nietzsche's Perspectival Theory of Knowledge 77

Chapter Three: Nietzsche's Emerging Internal Realism 129

Chapter Four: The Will to Power 187

Conclusion 252

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements to the Arts and Humanities Research Board for granting me a Fees Scholarship, 1998-2001.

Acknowledgements are also due to the University of Warwick for providing me with a "Graduate Award", 1998-2001.

Abstract

This thesis examines Nietzsche's philosophy as a response to Kant. I show that Kant, as interpreted by Nietzsche, dissociates epistemology and metaphysics. According to Nietzsche, the consequence of this dissociation is the collapse of Kant's transcendental epistemology into a sceptical idealism, which disables the making of positive metaphysical claims about the nature of reality. I argue that Nietzsche overcomes the dissociation of epistemology and metaphysics by rejecting Kant's distinction between constitutive, empirical knowledge and regulative, metaphysical belief. Furthermore, I show that Nietzsche rejects, what he considers to be, Kant's formalistic constitutive epistemology in favour of a regulative and interest-directed

account of knowledge. I argue that Nietzsche adopts an internal realist epistemology

that stipulates that our epistemic claims must be justified from within our perspectival practices of justification but that such claims must be subject to a realist constraint. Moreover, I propose that Nietzsche is justified, from within these epistemic parameters, in putting forward metaphysical claims about the nature of reality. The thesis is structured in four chapters. Chapter one examines Nietzsche's appropriation of Kant. Chapter two takes up the issue of Nietzsche's perspectivism in the context of

his concerns with the issues of justification and truth. The penultimate chapter examines the emergence ofNietzsche's internal realism in his early writings. Finally,

chapter four examines Nietzsche's will to power thesis where I contend that the

Introduction

This thesis is primarily concerned to address the question of Nietzsche's epistemology and metaphysics as a response to, what he considers to be, both the partial success and ultimate failure of Kant's philosophy. I will argue that both Kant and Nietzsche share the same philosophical project, which is the desire to reconcile "knowledge and metaphysics".l However, I will maintain that it is Nietzsche's view that Kant ultimately fails to execute this task and that Kant is responsible for positing an epistemic gap between self and world. It will be shown that Nietzsche considers that this epistemic gap results from Kant's distinction between theoretical constitutive knowledge and regulative practical belief. The thesis will set about demonstrating the manner in which Nietzsche resolves this Kantian difficulty by practicalizing Kant's epistemic programme and removing the constitutive account of knowledge that merely serves, in Nietzsche's view, to forge an opposition between self and world. This will provide the focus of my subsequent examination of both Nietzsche's perspectivism and his doctrine of the will to power. In examining these

1 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will 10 Power, translated by Waiter Kaufinann, (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 458 (1888). [Hereafter cited as WP] That Nietzsche aims to reconcile knowledge and metaphysics can be seen from his praise of, what he regards as, Schopenhauer's desire to reconcile "knowledge and being". (Nietzsche, "Schopenbauer as Educator", 3 in Untimely Meditations, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). That Kant shares a similar project

can be discerned from his claim that

doctrines we will see that Nietzsche overcomes the epistemic division of self and world by putting forward an anthropomorphic conception of knowledge that does not preclude a realist constraint. Nietzsche's particular conception of knowledge that is both anthropomorphic and realist in character will be described throughout the thesis as internal realism. This term is designed to capture what, I will argue, is Nietzsche's view that our knowledge is entwined with our specifically human interests and concerns but that our epistemic claims capture the truth about the world. We will see that Nietzsche is concerned to demonstrate that we can justifiably make objective metaphysical claims about the nature of reality from within an anthropomorphic and

interest-directed conception of knowledge.

Nietzsche's reconciliation of knowledge and metaphysics can be best demonstrated by focusing on his epistemological concerns. However, throughout his writings Nietzsche castigates the traditional practice of epistemology for positing a divide between self and world.2 This divide, he contends, results from the traditional

significant sense. In this thesis we will see that Nietzsche's philosophical concerns are intertwined with those of Kant and the issue of the relationship between epistemology and metaphysics. I will argue that Nietzsche develops his consideration

of the issues of truth and knowledge within the Kantian framework that prioritizes epistemology over metaphysics, but in a manner that allows him to avoid the

scepticism that he associates with Kant.

By focusing on the issue of knowledge and metaphysics I take up a specific

historical issue in philosophy. In the eighteenth century a debate broke out between Kant and Herder regarding the relationship between self and world. Herder was

concerned to show that self and world are continuous and that both the organic and

the inorganic realm can be explained by recourse to a unifying force manifest in both realms. Drawing on the work of both Leibniz and Boscovich,3 Herder postulated a

continuity between the forces of nature and the forces of spirit. In so doing, he contended that reality is composed of a hierarchical organization of forces. For

Herder in particular, then, and the Sturm und Drang in general the world is a living

unity and an organic dynamic being.

Kant, however, took exception to Herder's project. For Kant was a representative of the Aufkliirung and thus sought to uphold the Enlightenment belief

in Reason. Kant argued that Herder's "force metaphysics" was an example of aestheticism in science and that it lacked the rigour and method of true scientific

practice. Thus Kant complained that Herder engaged in dogmatic metaphysics.

2 For Nietzsche's criticism of epistemology, see, for example, WP, 407 (1884) fr., 488 (1887) ff

3 See John H. Zarnmito, The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment, (London: University of Chicago

Moreover, Kant argued that Herder's attempt to construe self and world as continuous devalued man's status as a rational and freely acting moral agent. Behind Kant's criticism of Herder was the desire to uphold the traditional Christian belief in God and the dignity of man.

Pivotal to the debate between Herder and Kant is the issue of the relationship between art and science. This debate can be articulated as one between Neo-Classicism and Romanticism. Kant maintains that the Romantic understands art as the domain of the "genius". As such art is deemed to be conceptual and extra-rational. According to Kant, such aestheticism in science involves appeal to non-propositional "revelations" that cannot be articulated for the purposes of communication and education.4 Thus, one of Kant's complaints regarding the Romantic cult of the genius is that such a manner of investigation takes place on the level of instinct rather than of Reason.5 For Kant the aesthetic belongs to the domain of Sensibility. Sensibility, for him, is the passive faculty of knowledge that is "affected" by objects. It is distinguished from both the faculties of the Understanding and of Reason. Aestheticism is then, in Kant's view, devoid of rules or conceptual form.6 Devoid of rules, aesthetic freedom is, for Kant, a mere extra-conceptual "confusion".? He states:

4 See Kant, Critique of Judgement, translated by James Creed Meredith, (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1991),46, p. 169. Hereafter cited as Cl slbid.,47,p.171-2.

[ ---] shallow minds fancy that the best evidence they can give of their being full-blown geniuses is by emancipating themselves from all academic constraint of rules, in the belief that one cuts a finer figure on the back of an ill-tempered than of a trained horse. Genius can do no more than furnish rich material for products of fine art; its elaboration and its form require a talent academically trained, so that it may be employed in such a way as to stand the test of Judgement. g

Only science, understood in the broad sense of rigorous scholarship and academic training, can provide, in Kant's view, this much needed conceptual forrn.9 Moreover, Kant argues that science must be given priority over art. \0 In so doing, he attempts, in opposition to Herder, to separate science from the humanities in general. Zammito captures Kant's view when he states:

[---] Kant is questioning the justice in using the word "science" in the whole realm of the humanities as such. In other words, Kant is launching the campaign for the separation of the so-called "two cultures" by the demotion of the humanities from the rank of Wissenschaft. He writes that these "elegant sciences [schonen Wissenschaften] constitute merely the preparation in scholarship requisite for the cultivation of taste [ ___ ] 11

By arguing for the priority of science over art Kant can be seen to resist the movement in mid-eighteenth century scientific thought "from logical, mathematical,

g Kant, CJ, 47, p. 171-2.

9 According to Kant, 'genius' can only be cultivated through academic training and discipline. He claims

that the emphasis placed on 'originality' by the Sturm unci Drang is insufficient. John Zammito captures Kant's argument as follows:

It is to retrieve the Zweckmiissigkeit ohne Zweck whose outcome was an artistic masterpiece that one artist studies another's work. And to discern it, while vital to the appreciation, is nothing if it does not elicit in the artist a latent capacity in himself to emulate that process, to make a work of art of his own. Therefore, the only way the potential genius can be cultivated is to subject him or her to that rigorous exposure to exemplary instances of artistic genius which is just what is meant by "academic training". And hence that very "mechanical" element cannot be evaded in the cultivation of the artist. But Kant wishes to assert even more: the mechanical is not only indispensable in the cultivation of the artist, it is also indispensable in the artist's creation of a work." (Zammito, The Genesis of Kant 's Critique of Judgment, p. 141). 10 In CJ, 47, p. 170 Kant states that science can be taught. He also claims that science makes progress on the path to knowledge. For these reasons he argues that science is superior to art:

[ ---] scientists can boast a ground of considerable superiority over those who merit the honour of being called geniuses, since genius reaches a point at which art must make a halt, as there is a limit imposed upon it which it cannot transcend.

~bstract rationalism toward a more complex qualitative and metaphysical orientation . .,12

However, Kant could not completely resist the qualitative conception of the world that was coming to the fore. Newton, who worked within the parameters of the seventeenth century mathematical and rationalist conception of science, found that this system succumbed to a number of "anomalies". The impact model of causation, Newton found, could not explain gravity. In a revision of his Optiks, then, Newton introduced the idea of force fields acting at a distance. However, Newton introduced such forces as speculative "imponderable principles" thus remaining ambiguous as to their metaphysical status. Zammito captures Newton's position when he states that

Newton recognized the existence of forces, and their vital importance to physical science, but he found it impossible to recognize them as immanent properties of particulate matter. Instead he simply termed them "etherial" or "imponderable principles" of physical action. Obviously, the term "principle" is extremely vague as to the exact nature of these phenomena, i.e., as to their substantive reality and metaphysical implications. His successors would wrestle with this question intensely in the eighteenth century. 1

In contrast to Newton's hesitation with regard to the metaphysical status of force, the vital ism of such thinkers as Herder represented a move towards the substantialization of force. Herder's vitalism entailed the idea that reality, both human and natural, comprised a hierarchical organization of forces. It was precisely this move that Kant sought to resist. However, Kant recognized that appeal to force was necessary if one was to successfully avoid those anomalies in natural science experienced by Newton. Moreover, it was necessary, in Kant's view, to establish the unity of nature as a system of empirical laws. In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that Reason

12 Ibid., p. 195. Zammito attributes the qualitative shift in science to Leibniz and Boscovich. (Ibid., p.

196).

seeks systematic unity In nature by attempting to identify a single fundamental

force/power that unifies the diversity of individual powers:

Though logic is not capable of deciding whether a fundamental power actually exists, the idea of such a power is the problem involved in a systematic representation of the multiplicity of powers. The logical principle of reason calls upon us to bring about such unity as completely as possible; and the more the appearances of this and that power are found to be identical with one another, the more probable it becomes that they are simply different manifestations of one and the same power, which may be entitled, relatively to the more specific powers, the fundame11tal power. 14

The notion of system evokes, for Kant, the idea of a unifying force operating purposively within nature. In this way, Kant's appeal to force can be understood in the context of his attempt to supplement mechanism with a teleological system of empirical laws. In order to both avoid dogmatic metaphysics and retain the 'dignity of man', however, Kant introduced the concept of unifying force as a regulative idea of purposiveness in nature. A regulative idea, for Kant, is a hypothetical research principle. He states in the first introduction to the Critique of Judgement, that" [-] we must necessarily presume the presence of such a unity, apart from any ability on our part to apprehend Of prove its existence.,,15 The regulative character of the quest

for a unifying force is further brought to our attention in the Critique of Pure Reason

when Kant states that

The relatively fundamental powers must in turn be compared with one another, with a view to discovering their harmony, and so to bring them nearer to a single radical, that is, absolutely fundamental, power. But this unity of reason is purely hypothetical. We do not assert that such a power must necessarily be met with, but that we must seek it in the interests of reason, that is, of establishing certain principles for the manifold rules which experience may supply to us. We must endeavour, wherever possible, to bring in this way systematic unity into our

16

knowledge.

14 Kant, CPR, A6491B677.

l'

In order to uphold both his commitment to philosophical method and his theological allegiances, Kant claims that the concept of unifYing force is a regulative principle that guides our investigation rather than a substantial metaphysical claim about the nature of reality. 17 If Kant were to attribute to the concept of force a metaphysically

real status he would come close, in his view, to the dogmatic metaphysics of the vitalistic and qualitative conception of world adopted by Herder and the Sturm und

17 Not all Kant scholars agree that Kant introduces the concept of force as a regulative principle. Indeed

this issue has given rise to a debate in the Kant literature regarding the status of force. Some commentators read Kant's appeal to force as constitutive. Such commentators include Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), Rae Langton, Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), and Jeffi"ey Edwards, Substance, Force, and the Possibility of Knowledge, (London: University of California Press, 2000). By "constitutive" such scholars mean that the introduction of the concept of force is intertwined with and necessitated by Kant's constitutive ~pistemolo8Y of the 'Analytic'. Such commentators argue that Kant engages in an a priori deduction of the laws of natural science. The debate is a complex and difficult one. However, as Susan Neiman points out, the a priori conception of science that is presupposed by the constitutive reading is at odds with Kant's empiricist tendencies. She states:

Far from supporting a rationalist vision that would deduce the laws of science from other

necessary truths, Kant's statements about the importance of observation and experiment, as well as his insistence on the incompletability of natural science, suggest a very modern view, to which the hope of an a priori deduction from transcendental principles is completely foreign. (Susan Neiman, The Unity of Reason: ReReading Kant, (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1997), p. 55.

Moreover, the regulative reading, which is also supported by Gerd Buchdahl, MetaphySiCS and

Philosophy of Science, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969) is suggested by Kant in the Second Analogy in Critique of Pure Reason: .

How anything can be altered, and how it should be possible that upon one state in a given moment an opposite state may follow in the next moment - of this we have not, a priori, the least conception. For that we require knowledge of actual forces, which can only be given empirically, as, for instance, of the moving forces, or what amounts to the same thing, of certain successive appearances, as motions, which indicate [the presence of] such forces. But apart from all question of what the content of the alteration, that is, what the state which is altered, may be, the form of every alteration, the condition under which, as a coming to be of another state, it can alone take place, and so the succession of the states themselves (the happening), can still be considered a priori according to the law of causality and the conditions of time. (CPR, A207)

From the above we witness Kant's view that the categories are constitutive with regard to the form of experience. That they are regulative with regard to content (force) can be seen from his description of an Analogy:

An analogy of experience is, therefore, only a rule according to which a unity of experience may arise from perception. It does not tell us ~ow mere perception or empirical intuition in

Drang. In order to avoid this threat Kant claims that we can appeal to a teleological system of empirical laws by considering nature as analogous to a divine artwork. 18 In this way, he links the concept of unifying force with divine purposiveness.19 Thus in an attempt to both comprehend the purposiveness of nature and retain the dignity of man by allowing for an extra-empirical moral order, Kant projects a purposiveness beyond nature. He states that "Nature is no longer estimated as it appears like art, but rather in so far as it actually is art, though superhuman art. ,,20

From the above we can see that the debate between Kant and Herder leaves us in a bind. If we give credence to Kant's criticism of Herder then it seems that we are only entitled to make metaphysical claims from within a strict methodological framework. However, Kant's methodology stipulates that metaphysical claims must

principles of the empirical, not of the transcendental employment of understanding [-] (CPR, AI801B223).

18 In CPR KaRt links the idea of God with the systematic unity of nature:

[ - ] the idea of such a being, like all speculative ideas, seeks only to formulate the command of reason, that all connection in the world be viewed in accordance with the principles of a systematic unity -as if all such connection had its source in one single all-embracing being, as the supreme and all-sufficient cause. [---] This highest formal unity, which rests solely on concepts of reason, is the purposive unity of things. The speculative interest of reason makes it necessary to regard all order in the world as if it had originated in the purpose of a supreme reason. Such a principle opens out to our reason, as applied in the field of experience, altogether new views as to how the things of the world may be connected according to teleological laws, and so enables it to arrive at their greatest systematic unity. The assumption of a supreme intelligence, as the one and only cause of the universe, though in the idea alone, can therefore always benefit reason and can never injure it. (CPR, A6861B714-A6811B715).

19 Rae Langton's analysis ofKant's concept offorce suggests the close link between this concept and

the role of God in Kant' s system. Langton suggests that forces represent, for Kant, extrinsic properties that are irreducible to the intrinsic properties of a substance. Forces or causal powers are said to be dependent on something other than the way a thing is, in and of itself They are thus said to be contingent and dependent on God. For Langton tells us that, in Kant's view. "God superadds (insuper

accesserit) to the monads powers of relating to each other, and this creative addition is entirely 'arbitrary'

[--er.

A substance never has the power through its own intrinsic properties to determine others different from itself, as has been proven. It only has the power in so far as substances are held together in a nexus through the idea of an infinite being. (cited by Langton, p. 118).

be regulative and, therefore, non-cognitive In character. Moreover, Herder's metaphysics is attractive in the context of Nietzsche's aim to reconcile self and

world. In this thesis we will see that Nietzsche takes up this debate. His response is to combine appropriate aspects of both Herder and Kant. He combines Herder's

qualitative conception of the world with Kant's commitment to method and the need to justify our metaphysical claims.

On one level, then, Nietzsche sides with Herder and the Romantics. Firstly, he

rejects Kant's theological commitments, which he claims led Kant astray. Thus he puts forward Dionysus as a decidedly anti-Christian idea1.21 That Nietzsche shares a degree of sympathy with Herder can be further seen from his praise of Goethe who CiJ

/tqbeJ(I

ted

Golluded with Herder on the project regarding the continuity of the natural and the cultural. 22 Goethe represents, for Nietzsche, a synthesis of sense and spirit. 23

However, that Nietzsche did not completely side with the Romantics over Classicism can be discerned from his numerous criticisms of Romanticism and from his

promotion of Classicism over Romanticism.24 Classicism, for Nietzsche, stands for

20 Kant, Cl, 48, p. 173.

21 Nietzsche, WP, 1052 (1888).

22 Zammito, The Genesis of Kant 's Critique of Judgment, p. 183.

2J Nietzsche, WP, 1051 (1885). Nietzsche also calls this "intelligent sensuality" [wp, 800 (1888)].

Nietzsche can thus be seen to participate in the qualitative shift mentioned earlier. John Zammito characterizes this shift as an anti-Cartesian stance:

The distinction between matter and spirit which had been the key to Cartesian thought and the interminable wrangle of philosophy in his wake (the so-called "mind-body" problem) came in

the light of the new science to collapse toward a unity. (Zammito, The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment, p. 196).

24 In WP, 847 (1887), for example, Nietzsche describes Romanticism as "reactive" and Classicism as

"active". Reactivity, for Nietzsche, denotes something ill constituted and weak, whilst Activity denotes health and strength.

logic and simplification.25 Moreover, Nietzsche maintains that the Romantics do not object to Classicism per se but rather they protest against its use of Reason as an

extra-empiricallegislative faculty. Nietzsche states that "The romantics in Germany do not protest against classicism, but against reason, enlightenment, taste, the eighteenth century." 26 By this I take Nietzsche to mean that Romanticism protests

against the legislative use of the concepts of pure Reason to the extent that these concepts are taken to be both innate and certain and, as such, to act as a normative

standard of judgement. Moreover, Nietzsche argues that these legislative concepts are said to constrain reality rather than be constrained by it. This sets up a dualism of

Reason and senses whereby Reason represents the standard of how things ought to be in opposition to how they actually are.27 Understood in this particular sense Nietzsche argues that the pure concepts of Reason have come to represent an extra-empirical

authority. Nietzsche warns against such faith in the pure concepts of Reason when he

states:

[---] they have trusted in concepts as completely as they have mistrusted the senses: they have not stopped to consider that concepts and words are our inheritance from ages in which thinking was very modest and unclear. [---] Hitherto one has generally trusted one's concepts as if they were a wonderful dowry from some sort of wonderland: but they are, after all, the inheritance from our most remote, most foolish as well as most intelligent ancestors. 28

Nietzsche's comment regarding the Romantic dispute with Classicism is insightful because it indicates his view, that should the status of the pure concepts of Reason be

properly modified. Romanticism and Classicism are compatible. It would seem that

Nietzsche thinks that Goethe embodies the virtues of a reconciliation of these two

2S Ibid., 849 (1887-1888). See also WP, 800 (1888) and WP, 799 (1888).

26 Ibid., 849 (1887-1888).

27 Nietzsche describes the nihilistic project of dissociating the world as it is from how it ought to be in

schools of thought. He describes Goethe as the synthetic man who is capable of, what Nietzsche tenns, "disciplina vo/untatis ,,]9. Disciplina vo/untatis represents, for

Nietzsche, a synthesis of theoretical and practical reasoning in favour of an instinctive or embodied conception of rationality. By praising Goethe' s instinctive

rationality, Nietzsche rejects the legislative use of the concepts of pure Reason. The legislative view entails, according to him. that pure concepts constitute an otherwise

unfonned world or thing-in-itself Such a view maintains that the world is extrinsically ordered rather than intrinsically ordered. Nietzsche's appeal to an instinctive rationality upholds the view that both the subject and its concepts are

immersed within the world and that subject and world share the relationship of evolving part to larger evolving whole.3o In so doing, we will see that Nietzsche

facilitates a synthesis of Kant's methodological concerns with Herder's force metaphysics. Moreover. we will also see that this synthesis makes possible the making of objective metaphysical claims from within an internal realist

epistemology. Internal Realism. as already indicated, entails the view that our epistemic claims are justified from within a strict methodology, but that their

justification entails their adequacy to reality.

My examination of Nietzsche's response to the debate between Classicism and Romanticism in this thesis will be issue driven. By this I mean that I will

interpret Nietzsche's thought as a response to a general philosophical problem which

28 Ibid., 409 (1885).

29 Ibid., 132 (1885).

30 I borrow this tenninology from Jay Rosenberg's One World and Our Knowledge of It. (Dordrecht:

has particular historical roots. That an issue led analysis is a viable way to approach Nietzsche's writings is suggested by Nietzsche himself when he states:

[ --] I never attack persons; I use a person only as a strong magnifYing glass with which to disclose some general critical situation.3l

This is further suggested in one of Nietzsche's early unpublished notes where he

infonns us that

I am trying to be useful to those who are worthy of being seriously and opportunely introduced to philosophy. This attempt mayor may not succeed. I am only too well aware that it can be

surpassed and I wish nothing more than that I might be imitated and surpassed to the benefit of this philosophy. 32

The larger philosophical issues that concern Nietzsche are that of the opposition of

self and world in particular and the relation of epistemology and metaphysics in general. In so far as we can construe Nietzsche's thought as a response to Kant we

will see that he shares Kant's desire to reconcile knowledge and metaphysics. Nietzsche applauds Kant's attempts to overcome both scepticism and idealism. However, we will see that Nietzsche thinks that Kant's account of knowledge is

fatally flawed and that these flaws entrap him, contrary to his aims, within a sceptical idealist framework that disallows him the right to make objective metaphysical

claims. We will see that Nietzsche shares Kant's concerns with the questions of method and the justification of our epistemic claims. However, Nietzsche maintains

that Kant's constitutive account of knowledge and his regulative view of belief dissociate epistemology and metaphysics. Furthermore, we will see that it is

31 Nietzsche cited by KarI Jaspers, Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of his

Philosophical Activity, translated by Charles F. WaIlraff and Frederick J. Schmitz, (London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 411.

32 Friedrich Nietzsche. "The Philosopher" paragraph 159 in Philosophy and Truth: Selections from

Nietzsche's view that Kant's theological commitments blinker his thinking to the detriment of his philosophy as a whole.

My examination of Nietzsche's positive philosophy will centre round his perspectival theory of knowledge and the doctrine of the will to power. In so doing, I

will argue that Nietzsche proffers a naturalized and pragmatic account of Kant's epistemology whereby our inquiry into the world is non-constitutive and directed by our changing needs and interests. Moreover, by extending this discussion to an analysis of the will to power thesis we will see that Nietzsche puts a methodology in

place to facilitate the making of objective metaphysical claims about the nature of reality.

With this in mind it remains for me to outline the plan that the thesis will follow. The thesis will be structured in four chapters. The first chapter will set up Nietzsche's philosophy as a response to Kant. My investigation will show that Nietzsche has three interrelated issues of contention with Kant. These are the issues

of form and content, the problem of the thing-in-itself and, finally, Kant's

anti-naturalist desire to retain belief in God, freedom and immortality. We will see that all

three difficulties are reducible to the distinction between constitutive knowledge and regulative belief By considering Nietzsche's estimation of Kant in these contexts I

will demonstrate his view that Kant's philosophy induces, contrary to its own aims, a sceptical opposition between self and world. This will set the stage for the remainder of the thesis, which will examine Nietzsche's response to this issue. We will see that the introduction of his perspectivism and doctrine of the will to power provide his

My examination in chapter two will take up the issue of overcoming the epistemic gap between self and world within the context of Nietzsche's perspectival theory of knowledge. I will trace the development of Nietzsche's rejection of the constitutive account of knowledge. In particular I will address Nietzsche's rejection

of metaphysical realism, which is manifested in the appearance/reality distinction. In

its specifically Kantian guise metaphysical realism gives rise to sceptical idealism, which forges a separation of self and world by dissociating truth and justification. However, I will argue that Nietzsche's perspecttvism, understood as an epistemic

thesis, overcomes this difficulty. I will contend that his perspectivism reunites the

issues of truth and justification thus overcoming the sceptical separation of knowledge and belief that he detects in Kant. In so doing, it will be seen that, for Nietzsche, our perspectives are perspectives in the world rather than constitutive of the world. We will thus witness Nietzsche's view that our perspectives are rooted within the world rather than cut off from it in the manner of the sceptical idealist.

In the third chapter I will address Nietzsche's early writings in an attempt to draw out what, I will argue, is Nietzsche's early emerging solution to the problem of the separation of self and world. I will thus divide Nietzsche's philosophical development into an "early" and "late" period. The former will include all his writings up to 1878. This will encompass both published and unpublished writings up to, but not including, Human, All Too Human. I will deem his writings during 1878 to

1901 as constitutive of his "late" period. This will include the writings from Human.

All Too Human to The Will to Power. However. this division will be made in the

that his "early" thinking can be understood as a prelude to his "later" thought. Within the period that I have designated as "early" we will see that Nietzsche considers three responses to the problem of the opposition between self and world. The first is a dogmatic realist one that claims that our human truths fail to mirror reality. In so doing, it disallows any reconciliation of self and world. However, on realizing that this view presupposes prior knowledge of the thing-in-itself, Nietzsche adopts a sceptical idealist response. This too meets with failure. However, I will argue that we can detect an emerging internal realist view that facilitates a successful reconciliation of our knowledge with the nature of reality.33 This position maintains that as knowers we are immersed within and constrained by the world in contrast to the extra-empirical subject of knowledge that Nietzsche associates with both Kant and Schopenhauer. My investigation will also include an examination of the interdependent relationship between the Apolline and the Dionysiac in The Birth of Tragedy and the relationship between art and science. With regard to the former we will see that the two Greek Gods, representing the forms of human knowledge and metaphysical truth respectively, share a reciprocal relationship rather than an oppositional one. We will further see that this reciprocity extends to the relationship between art and science where Nietzsche reconciles our normative engagement in the world with the truth about the world. In so doing, I will argue that Nietzsche's early

33 In so doing, I will attempt to show, contrary to some contemporary readings of Nietzsche, that there

writings provide the framework in which the opposition of self and world can be overcome.

change. We will see that Nietzsche's metaphysics emerges from his engagement with, and supplementation of, Boscovich' s concept of force. My examination of the two aspects of Nietzsche's will to power thesis in both parts one and two will indicate that the will to power facilitates Nietzsche's successful overcoming of the "Kantian"

dissociation of epistemology and metaphysics.

Before I embark upon this project there are two issues which ought to be

addressed. The first relates to my decision to employ the term "metaphysics" rather than "ontology". In his recent book, Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation, 34

Christoph Cox has opted to employ the term "ontology" rather than "metaphysics". Cox argues that "ontology" does not carry the other-worldly implications that Nietzsche vehemently rejects and associates with traditional metaphysics. However,

my decision to employ the term "metaphysics" rather than "ontology" is motivated by the desire to capture, what I will argue is, the speculative and regulative character of Nietzsche's claims about the nature of reality. 35 Nietzsche' s claims about the nature

of reality are speculative, not in the sense that they are unjustified, but rather in the particular sense that they are not merely empirical descriptions of reality. Rather, as I

will show, metaphysics constitutes, for Nietzsche, a research project guided by our interests that must ultimately be justified according to a strict methodology. Moreover, the term "metaphysics" is also designed to capture, as will be seen in

chapter four, Nietzsche's emphasis on "explanation" rather than "description" in

34 Christoph Cox, Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation. (London: University of California Press,

1999), p. 6-7.

J~ John Wilcox appropriately tenns Nietzsche's metaphysics a "speculative cosmology" or "metaphysics in the empirical sense". Truth and Value in Nietzsche. (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,

making objective claims about reality. Thus, my use of the term 'metaphysics" is not designed to suggest that Nietzsche engages in any way in the other-worldly speculations that he castigates in Plato and Christianity.

However, the attribution of a metaphysics to Nietzsche is seen as a contentious issue in the secondary literature. There are some commentators who

argue that Nietzsche's perspectivism does not entitle him to make metaphysical claims.36 Equally there is a camp within Nietzsche studies that strives to emphasize the importance of metaphysics in Nietzsche's thought. As noted by Cox, one of the

36 See, for example, Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on Troth and Philosophy. Clark proffers what she

calls a "commonsense realist" reading of Nietzsche's perspectivist epistemology. However, she argues that his commonsense realism is incompatible with metaphysics, particularly, the type that is put forward in the cosmological version of the will to power. Arthur Oanto's interpretation of Nietzsche, likewise, emphasizes Nietzsche's perspectivist epistemology over his metaphysics of the will to power. Oanto argues that Nietzsche introduces realism as a supplement to his epistemology rather than as a complement. He argues that Nietzsche could not quite bring himself to embrace the possible idealist consequences of his perspectivism. Moreover he claims that because Nietzsche "wanted to say that all our beliefs are false, he was constrained to introduce a world for them to be false about. .. (Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher, New York: Columbia University Press, 1980, p. 96).

Readings that emphasize Nietzsche's metaphysics and his appeal to becoming and chaos etc. are evident in the "New Nietzsche" strand of interpretation, including that of Gilles Oeleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, translated by Hugh Tomlinson, (London: The Athlone Press, 1983). See also Oavid B. Allison (ed.), The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994).

However, there have been some recent attempts to re-align Nietzsche's epistemology with his metaphysics. Peter Poellner's "Perspectival Truth" in John Richardson and Brian Leiter (eds.), Nietzsche (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) argues that Nietzsche's perspectivism and his metaphysics are closely linked. Poellner re-aligns the metaphysics and the epistemology by prioritizing the former over the latter. He states:

[-] the reason why there is 'only a perspectival "knowing'" (GM III. 12) is [-] that the object of knowledge - the world - is itselfperspectival." (p. 86).

Mark T. Conard adopts a similar view in "Nietzsche's Kantianism", (International Studies in Philosophy, 33:3,2001). He states:

I want to suggest that the reason many readers do divorce Nietzsche's epistemology from his metaphysics is that they begin with his radical epistemological claims, and from there either try to justify or explain away (or modify) his claims about the world. [----] But this is backwards. The epistemological theses follow from Nietzsche's claims about the world. (p. 30).

principal reasons why commentators object to the attribution of a metaphysical view to Nietzsche is that they see it as engaging in the type of other-worldly speculation that Nietzsche explicitly rejects throughout his writings. Furthermore, some commentators who emphasize what they take as the falsification involved in his

perspectivism, argue that Nietzsche is not entitled to make metaphysical claims. Thus

those readings that give priority to Nietzsche's perspectivism have problematized his

engagement with metaphysics. On the other hand, those commentators who seek to emphasize Nietzsche's metaphysics see themselves as doing justice to the many metaphysical statements that he makes about the nature of reality, particularly his comments with regard to becoming and the will to power. This thesis will adopt an

inclusive approach to the issue of the relation between Nietzsche's epistemology and his metaphysics. In so doing, I will argue that Nietzsche's metaphysics is justified within the parameters of his perspectival theory of knowledge. Moreover, the aim here is to otTer a reading of Nietzsche's epistemology and metaphysics that allows them both to stand on their own two feet and be considered as independent, but compatible, doctrines. Thus I will argue that Nietzsche's perspectivism facilitates the

making of objective metaphysical claims about the nature of reality. However, it will be argued that Nietzsche engages with metaphysics on a regulative rather than a constitutive level and thus that this allows for revision and discovery. By this I mean that Nietzsche's metaphysics is justified within the parameters of his perspectival theory of knowledge but not that the metaphysics itself is dependent upon his

perspectiv;sm. Nietzsche leaves open the possibility that his metaphysical

explanations may require modification and alteration. Such changes, however, will

have to meet the same criteria of justification set down by his perspectival theory of

knowledge.

The second issue that I must address is the question of the status that this thesis will attribute to those writings that were not published in Nietzsche's lifetime.

There is a line of thought in contemporary Nietzsche studies that advocates that we restrict our analysis to those writings that were published in Nietzsche's lifetime. 37

Bemd Magnus has gone to considerable lengths to convince us that the collection of

notes posthumously published under the title The Will to Power is not a book Nietzsche had intended for publication. Magnus provides evidence for his claim that

whilst Nietzsche had seriously considered publishing a book of this name, he had by September 1888 abandoned this project altogether.38 Magnus thus argues that we are not justified in formulating an understanding of Nietzsche's thought on the basis of

these notes. This, he contends, is a strong reason to question any readings of Nietzsche that prioritize the notes. Magnus' argument obviously proves problematic

for any thesis that wishes to address Nietzsche's epistemological and metaphysical views. For Nietzsche's thoughts on these issues are given greater attention in the

posthumous material. As Richard Schacht notes, the "unpublished writings [-] contain much more of [Nietzsche's] expressed thinking on certain important matters

metaphysics to stand on their own two feet and be taken seriously on their own terms.

37 See Bemd Magnus, "The Use and Abuse of The Will to Power" in Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen

M. Higgins (eds.), Reading Nietzsche, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).

See also Wayne Klein, Nietzsche and the Promise of Philosophy, (A1bany: State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 181-99 and Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, pp. 25-27. 38 Bernd Magnus, "The Use and Abuse of The Will to Power", p. 225.

than do his finished works. ,,39 Moreover, Schacht puts forward an argument that

suggests that the issue of the status of Nietzsche's unpublished writings is not so straight forward. For Schacht points out that Nietzsche's case is unusual and presents

considerations that warrant a rethinking of the status of the unpublished notes. He argues that Nietzsche's illness was sudden and that it came upon him at a time when he had begun to publish with increasing frequency. Moreover, Schacht maintains that

the notebooks were the workshop for Nietzsche's published writings and thus that these notes provide some clue to what would have been Nietzsche's future

. . 40 compositions.

There is, however, a more philosophical reason that warrants use of the

posthumous material in formulating an interpretation of Nietzsche. This thesis, while acknowledging the concerns of Magnus and others, takes the view that any issue led reading of Nietzsche is obliged to consider the posthumous writings in a serious and

detailed way. My reasons for this view center round my contention that Nietzsche is primarily a philosopher who is concerned to address philosophical issues. In so doing,

Nietzsche attempts to get inside a philosophical problem, so to speak, and to address this particular problem by embodying multiple perspectives with regard to it.

Nietzsche's writings are then, in my view, very much the writings of a working philosopher. As Waiter Kaufmann maintains, Nietzsche's unpublished notes allow us "to look, as it were, into the workshop of a great thinker.'.41 However, Nietzsche not

only puts himself to work. He also labours his readers through his unsystematic and

39 Richard Schacht, Niet:sche, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), pxii.

aphoristic writing style. Nietzsche encourages his readers to engage with philosophy by forcing the reader to occupy the various perspectives that he himself has occupied. Moreover, he forces his readers to organize these perspectival thoughts into a coherent structure. Thus Nietzsche's writings, as Karl Jaspers points out, engage his readers in a creative and constructive fashion by encouraging them to philosophize themselves.42 This implies that Nietzsche's writings as a whole are intended by him to be a workshop for his readers. If this is the case, then, it is difficult to formulate a convincing argument to demote the philosophical status of the posthumous material, which were arguably the contents of his own workshop. Furthermore, the style that Nietzsche adopts in the posthumous material is not dissimilar to that employed by him in the published writings. Even if Magnus is correct that he had abandoned his plan to publish a book called The Will to Power, that does not mean that the

individual notes are not valid perspectives on a particular topic that concerned Nietzsche. The posthumous notes are significant to the extent that they are indicative of the types of problems that occupied Nietzsche and of the range of solutions that he considered. To the extent that Karl Jaspers is correct that Nietzsche intended his readers to be working philosophers, then, this approach to the posthumous writings is justified. I am thus in agreement with Cox when he states:

Like the notebooks, the published works contain relatively brief discussions and remarks that rarely, if ever, exhaust or provide Nietzsche's definitive view on any given issue. Instead, as in

his notebooks, Nietzsche's published work continually revisits earlier themes, issues, and

problems, adding new insights and perspectives in piecemeal fashion. The large mass of material left in the notebooks provides a wealth of such insights and perspectives on which we can draw in constructing our interpretations ofNietzsche. And, while we can never be sure just how much or what parts of this material Nietzsche fully endorsed or intended for publication,

41 Editor's introduction to Waiter Kautlnann's translation of the Will to Power, xvi, xiv-xv.

42 See KarI Jaspers, Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of his Philosophical Activity.

responsible use of the notebooks as a supplement to Nietzsche's published work gives us a much broader and deeper view of his philosophical thinking than a purist restriction to the published texts alone could provide. 43

It is on this note that I will begin examining Nietzsche's reconciliation of knowledge and metaphysics. I will proceed by now turning to his estimation of Kant in chapter one.

Chapter One

Nietzsche's Appropriation of Kant

1.1 Introduction

We laugh as soon as we encounter the juxtaposition of "man and world," separated by the sublime presumption of the little word "and." (The Gay Science, 346)

In "Schopenhauer as Educator", Nietzsche praises the reconciliation of "knowledge" and "being" as a philosophical project. 1 Although he attributes this project to

Schopenhauer in this early work, the reconciliation of knowledge and metaphysics is a task with which Nietzsche tirelessly engaged throughout his entire philosophical

career. If we follow the development of Nietzsche's thought we will see that his approach to the question alters as his thinking on the matter develops. However, it is

clear that the question remains the same. In this chapter we will see that Nietzsche's project of reconciling knowledge and metaphysics is intertwined with both his

appraisal and reworking of Kant's epistemology.

It is sometimes argued that Nietzsche had only a second-hand knowledge of Kant and thus that his comments on Kant are not to be treated with any considerable importance. However, as I shall demonstrate, it is clear from some of Nietzsche's

I Friedrich Nietzsche, "Schopenhauer as Educator", 3, in Untimely Meditations, translated by R. 1.

notebook entries that he had a sufficient understanding of Kant to render his own reworking of the Kantian programme a legitimate project. In saying this, we must stress that Nietzsche's reworking of Kant is always a reworking of a particular philosophical problem that Nietzsche thinks is exemplified in Kant's writings. Thus it can be argued that Nietzsche is not so much interested in the historical Kant but rather with a set of philosophical difficulties that can be broadly termed Kantian in character. With this in mind I will attempt to tease out what these "Kantian" difficulties are. We will see that there are three main difficulties that Nietzsche raises with regard to Kant. The first pertains to Kant's constitutive epistemology and the status of the categories as the form that is imposed on experience. We will see that Nietzsche attributes to Kant the idea that pure form can be imposed on an intrinsically formless content and, moreover, that Nietzsche was unhappy with this view. I shall call this the Form-Content problem. Secondly, Nietzsche maintains that Kant's retention of the thing-in-itself transcends our epistemic boundaries and illegitimately makes room for Kant's moralism. This will be simply referred to as the

problem of the thing-in-itself. Thirdly, Nietzsche is equally dissatisfied with Kant's

evocation of faith and morality and the manner in which it induces, according to Nietzsche's particular interpretation of Kant, a dissociation of knowledge and belief. I will refer to this as Kant's anti-naturalist thesis.2 Nietzsche argues that the problem

ofform and content along with both the problem of the thing-in-itselfand Kant's

anti-here that Nietzsche remained concerned to reconcile knowledge and being throughout his early and late thought.

2 Kant attempts to cater for belief in God, freedom and immortality. He states that "I have found it

naturalist thesis results in "epistemological skepticism,,3. Moreover this scepticism gives rise, in Nietzsche's view, to a severance of the theoretical from the practicaI.4 Nietzsche articulates his general description of Kant's philosophy when he states:

The movement back to Kant in our century is a movement back to the eighteenth century: one wants to regain a right to the old ideals and the old enthusiasm - for that reason an epistemology that "sets boundaries," which means that it permits one to posit as one may see fit a beyond of reason. S

In what follows I will proceed to examine the manner in which Nietzsche

links the above three difficulties to Kant. Thus in section two I will briefly outline each of the three problems. In the third section I will suggest that the scepticism that Nietzsche attributes to Kant is initiated by both the specific problem of the

thing-in-itself and, what Nietzsche considers to be, Kant's formalistic epistemology. The

penultimate section will take up the issue of scepticism with regard to Kant's distinction between constitutive knowledge and regulative belief. For we shall see

that this distinction facilitates Kant's separation of the theoretical and the practical and, in Nietzsche's view, paves the way for Kant's anti-naturalism. It is against this

background that I will turn to the final section. Here I will examine the manner in which Nietzsche attempts to overcome the "Kantian" scepticism by re-establishing a relationship between knowledge and belief In so doing, the final part of this chapter will investigate the manner in which Nietzsche thinks that he can overcome Kant's

difficulties by reworking the Kantian programme from the inside. This will involve an examination ofNietzsche's rejection of Kant's constitutive epistemology in favour

3 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, translated by Walter Kaufmann, (New York: Vintage Books,

1968), 101 (1887). Hereafter cited as WP.

of practical regulative ideas that develop and change according to our engagement with the world. This notion of regulative principles of justification will bring us to Nietzsche's particular form of realism that rejects the unknowable Kantian thing-in-itself but manages to maintain a realist position that constrains our epistemic claims.6

Moreover, my examination of Nietzsche's relationship to Kant in this chapter will provide the necessary background for an investigation into both Nietzsche's

perspectivism and the doctrine of the will to power in subsequent chapters. With this

in mind I will now proceed to examine Nietzsche's appraisal ofKant.

1.2 Nietzsche's Appraisal of Kant

That Nietzsche's thinking is intimately intertwined with that of Kant can be seen from the fact that his comments with regard to Kant are not entirely negative. This suggests that Nietzsche's thinking developlalongside his understanding of the Kantian project. In his earliest writing, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche has the utmost praise for Kant's philosophical achievements, which amount, in Nietzsche's view, to setting limits to conceptual and logical knowledge thus curbing rationalist hubris:

[---] great and universally minded spirits have, with incredible level-headedness, used the armoury of science to point out the limitations and determinations of knowledge, and have thus

S Nietzsche, WP, 95 (1887).

6 Thus it will be seen that Nietzsche advances his task of reconciling knowledge and metaphysics as a

naturalist project in general and an anti-theological project in particular. He states:

decisively negated the claims of science to universal validity and universal goals. In so doing, they have revealed the delusion, based on the principle of causality, which imagines it can explain the innermost essence of things. The tremendous courage and wisdom of Kant and Schopenhauer carried off the most difficult victory: victory over the optimism that lurked within the essence of logic, which in turn forms the basis of our culture. Where that optimism had believed that all the mysteries of the world could be known and explained, relying on apparently innocuous aeternae verilales, and had treated space, time, and causality as utterly unconditional and universal laws, Kant revealed how these in fact only served to transform mere phenomena, the work of Maya, into the sole true essence of things, and thus render true knowledge of that essence thoroughly impossible. 7

From the above citation we can see that. according to Nietzsche. Kanfs views

concerning the legitimate theoretical employment of the concepts of the Understanding and his theory of space and time as transcendental conditions of the possibility of knowledge. serve to limit our knowledge to knowledge of phenomena or appearances. In so doing. Kant denies us pure conceptual access to how things are

in themselves. In a revealing passage in The Gay Science Nietzsche explicitly links his own thought to Kant when he maintains that Kant initiated the project of setting

limits to knowledge:

Let us recall [---] Kant 's tremendous question mark that he placed after the concept of "causality" - without, like Hume, doubting its legitimacy altogether. Rather, Kant began cautiously to delimit the realm within which this concept makes sense (and to this day we are not done with this fixing oflimits). 8

Nietzsche's claim here that Kanfs project has not yet been completed suggests that his own philosophical project is very much entwined with his estimation of the

Kantian enterprise. As John Wilcox remarks. correctly I believe,

Whatever hard words he may have had for Kant as moralist and Christian, his own views, especially epistemological, are unintelligible apart from the problems Kant forced upon the nineteenth century or from Kant's contributions to Nietzsche's solutions to these problems.9

7 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, translated by Shaun Whiteside, (London: Penguin, 1993),

18 pp. 87-8. Hereafter cited as BT.

8 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, translated by Waiter Kaufinann, (New York: Vintage Books,

1974),357. Hereafter cited as GS.

However, Nietzsche's praise for Kant comes with reservations. He argues that Kant ultimately restricts our "knowledge" to appearances in order to allow him to make

reference to an extra-empirical realm. Thus Kant's appeal to an epistemic limit has, according to Nietzsche, both positive and negative consequences. The positive entails

establishing the empirical world as an object of knowledge whilst the negative involves a sceptical dissociation of such knowledge from how things are in themselves. To understand how this dissociation takes place we must ascertain how Nietzsche understands Kant's epistemology. This will involve a brief outline of the

three difficulties that Nietzsche attributes to Kant.

The first difficulty is that of form and content. In The Will to Power, 530

Nietzsche raises the Form-Content issue that he associates with Kant. In this passage Nietzsche addresses Kant's concern to establish the possibility of synthetic a priori judgements. Nietzsche sees Kant's conception of synthetic a priori judgements as

founded on the idea of giving form to experiential content. He argues that Kant "presupposes that there is not only "data a posteriori" but also "data a priori ":

Necessity and universality can never be given by experience! Thus they are independent of experience, prior to all experience! That insight that occurs a priori, therefore independently of all experience, out of sheer reason, is "apure fonn of knowledge"! [ ____ ]10

In this passage Nietzsche presents, as he sees it, Kant's dualist postulation of a pure a

priori element and an a posteriori element as the ultimate constituents of knowledge.

That Nietzsche is critical of this dualism can be discerned from his rejection of both

Rationalism, according to Nietzsche, bypasses sense-expenence In its pursuit of

knowledge. Strict empiricism/sensual ism, however, fares no better in Nietzsche's eyes. The empiricist, particularly the Humean variety, with its emphasis on the content of experience, arguably neglects form by reducing it to a mere psychological association of ideas. For both the rationalist and the empiricist, then, form and content are potentially separable opposites rather than symbiotic, essentially interdependent, partners. 11 The two doctrines are then, in Nietzsche's view, two sides of the one coin. In rejecting both views Nietzsche maintains that we cannot separate form from content in this way. By examining another passage we again receive indication that Nietzsche's bone of contention with Kant centers round the difficulty of imposing a priori form on a posteriori content. In this passage Nietzsche suggests, contrary to the view he attributes to Kant, that sensations as the data of experience are already injected with form before their assimilation under the judgement of the cognitive subject:

There could be no judgments at all if a kind of equalization were not practiced within sensations: memory is possible only with a continual emphasizing of what is already familiar,

. ed 12

expenenc .

Thus Nietzsche takes issue with Kant's claimed pure a priori status of the categories. By considering the role of the categories in this way Kant puts forward a constitutive account of knowing. The constitutive account maintains that the cognitive subject

10 Nietzsche, WP, 530 (1883-8).

11 See Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, translated by Marion Faber and Stephen Lehmann, (London:

constitutes the object of knowledge through the injection of pure a priori form on a

posteriori content. By introducing this constitutive conception Kant attempts to

render the object co-extensive with our knowledge. However, as we shall see later, Nietzsche thinks that Kant's constitutive epistemology is unable to facilitate a

reconciliation of knowledge and metaphysics. Moreover, Nietzsche suggests that even if Kant's separation of form and content were not itself problematic, his

attempted reconciliation of knowledge and metaphysics would still be thwarted by two further difficulties. As already indicated these are the problem of the

thing-in-itself and Kant's anti-naturalism.

Nietzsche argues that Kant's attempt to reconcile knowledge and metaphysics is incompatible with his retention of the thing-in-itself that transcends the boundaries of our knowledge. For it is Nietz~che's view that the thing-in-itself introduces an

extra-empirical realm that merely serves to dissociate our human truths from how things are in themselves. He suggests that the very reference to an extra-empirical realm casts doubt upon the epistemic status of our ordinary empirical claims to

knowledge.13 It is for this reason that Nietzsche suggests that what Kant considers to be "knowledge" cannot properly be accredited with any epistemic status. Nietzsche

claims that Kantian "knowledge" is devoid of epistemic weight when he states that ''judgment is a belief that something is thus and thus! And not knowledge!,,14

Nietzsche thus articulates his view that Kant does not give us knowledge at all but

12 Nietzsche, WP, 532 (1885). For Nietzsche on rationalism see BGE, Preface and 16. For sensuaIism

see BGE, 12 and 15. For Humean empiricism as a rejection of the synthetic a priori see WP, 530 ( 1883-1888).

\J See HAH. 16 where Nietzsche states that there is no epistemic connection between

only realistically unconstrained beliefs. This can be seen more clearly if we consider Nietzsche's use of the terms "belief' and "knowledge."

Nietzsche defines "beliefs" as "provisional assumptions". 15 By this I take him

to mean that "beliefs" are tools that direct inquiry. Whether our "beliefs" are to be accredited with epistemic merit depends on what we mean by the term "knowledge". Nietzsche defines the term "knowledge" in both a negative and positive way. Taken in the negative and, in Nietzsche's view, particularly Kantian sense, "beliefs" are denied epistemic merit. The negative definition suggests that if knowledge is taken to be co-extensive with either Kant's constitutive account of knowledge or with things-in-themselves (which Kant claims are unknowable anyway), then knowledge is a fruitless goal. Nietzsche puts forward the view that the categories can neither constitute an object nor provide knowledge of things-in-themselves. That Nietzsche thinks that Kant has claimed an illegitimate constitutive role for the categories can be gleaned from the following passage where he suggests that Kant's categories should really be construed as regulative beliefs:

"The basic laws of logic, the law of identity and the law of contradiction, are fonns of pure knowledge, because they precede all experience." - But these are not forms of knowledge at all! They are regulative articles of belief [my emphasis] 16

That Nietzsche thinks that the very reference to the thing-in-itself as an extra-empirical and unconditioned realm is illegitimate can be seen from his positive perspectival account of knowledge:

14 Nietzsche, WP, 530 (1883-1888).

1~ Ibid .. 497 (1884).